DESCRIPTION (Applicant's Abstract): In this proposal, the University of Texas at El Paso requests continuing support of institutional development activities designed to strengthen the university infrastructure of mental health training programs, and to support five research projects involving faculty in the departments of psychology and sociology. The main institutional goals include the development of new researchers investigating mental health with minority populations, the development of a cross disciplinary approach to the study of mental health, and the further fostering of a new Ph.D. program in applied psychology. This new Ph.D. program, which trains bilingual bicultural psychologists, designed to address minority issues on the U.S/Mexico border and in the southwest, and is unique in overall focus. With the support of the Minority Research Infrastructure Support Program (M-RISP), it is anticipated that the program and faculty will develop nationally recognized and competitive research programs involving minority students and faculty investigating basic minority mental health issues. The research projects involve an array of closely aligned projects investigating stress, developmental approaches to stress, the stressful effects of racial and gender discrimination in the workplace, self esteem processes predicting racial prejudice, and eating-related behaviors. All of the proposed research projects entail either cross-cultural approaches to psychology, or make unique contributions to our knowledge regarding minority mental health.